It’s becoming increasingly clear that Trump and his generals think they’re fighting World War II. Col. Macgregor observed that they appear to be preparing for a massive 96-hour bombing operation next week to provide cover for the insertion of a few thousand light infantry. What this could possibly accomplish appears dubious; the plan is being compared to Operation Market Garden, or worse, Gallipoli.
No one in either Tel Aviv or Washington DC appears to have learned any lessons from watching the Ukrainian war. They’re trying to apply centralized WWII strategies while Iran is utilizing indirect asymmetric 5GW strategies. And it’s pretty clear that Iran is winning, since everything that was being reported about Iran’s missile stocks running out and its missile launchers being destroyed is observably false.
There were close to 40,000 U.S. troops in the region when the war started, and Central Command has dispersed thousands of them, some to as far away as Europe, American military officials said. But many have remained in the Middle East, although not on their original bases, military officials said… Many of the 13 military bases in the region used by American troops are all but uninhabitable, with the ones in Kuwait, which is next door to Iran, suffering perhaps the most damage.
This is what is historically known as a “defeat” followed by a “retreat”. As Simplicius notes, this is the most infrastructure damage that the US military has ever suffered at the hands of any enemy, with the possible exception of Pearl Harbor and losing the Philippines to Japan in WWII.
There are also what appear to be Chinese reports that the Kirya, Israel’s Pentagon, has been hit and that its command structure has been disrupted. If true, the fact that Iran is now successfully striking Israel’s nuclear operations, its primary airport, and its central command indicates that the air defenses are now degraded to the point that Iran, not Israel, has airstrike superiority.